Usage with ROS/catkin packages?

[martinandrovich]

I was wondering whether it is possible to use YCM with existing ROS1/catkin packages? Instead of using vcstool and catkin tools to define (setup and build) a workspace of packages. And if, by any chance, there are some examples of doing so?

I like really the idea behind YCM and how it only depends on CMake. The paper was very well written too, so kudos!

[traversaro]

Hi @martinandrovich! I think that in general this is possible, as ROS1/catkin packages in the end are just regular CMake packages. The main challenges that I imagine you can encounter in practice are:

• Manually convert dependencies info from package.xml in Build***.cmake files: using ROS1 or ROS2 build tools, the dependencies between packages is contained in the package.xml files, while if you want to use them in a YCM/CMake superbuild, you need to manually write in Build***.cmake files
• It is common practice in ROS world to have a single repo that contains multiple CMake packages, each contained in its own directory. If that is the case in the projects that you want to include in the superbuild, you probably need to write a Build***.cmake script for each cmake package, and specify appropriately the ~CONFIGURE_SOURCE_DIR (see for example https://github.com/robotology-playground/robotology-superbuild/blob/master/cmake/Buildorocos_kdl.cmake#L10)~ the SOURCE_SUBDIR (see https://github.com/robotology/ycm/issues/210)

However, I did not try anything like that in a long time, so if you any question or if you want to report your feedback on this, feel free to do so. Note furthermore (even if this is unrelated to YCM) that w.r.t. to the past (i.e. to when we wrote the paper) it is now possible to use tools such as colcon to build pure CMake packages, see for example https://colcon.readthedocs.io/en/released/user/quick-start.html#build-gazebo-and-the-ignition-packages .

GitHub

robotology-playground/robotology-superbuild

Robotology Superbuild. Contribute to robotology-playground/robotology-superbuild development by creating an account on GitHub.

Quick start — colcon documentation

[martinandrovich]

Hey @traversaro,

Yeah, since ROS1/catkin packages are basically CMake packages, it does seem doable - thank you for clearing things up. I actually stumbled upon colcon today, and am now trying to decide which tools makes the most sense to use.

[traversaro]

Hi @martinandrovich, if you think you do not have any more doubt of this, feel free to close the issue, thanks!